It’s a cashmere jungle out there, full of gorgeous and powerful career women sipping wine midafternoon, a mafia of designer-dolled and lipstick- wearing buddies who conspire to have it all.

Why now? Just imagine the anti- Hillary forces condemning these two network shows about type-A female personalities, as if they had anything to do with serious achievers.

The assertive-to-the point-of-aggressive woman is getting special scrutiny this year.

Whether they’re sparring over a lover, a promotion or a condo, women can be sharks. At least that’s the vision of successful cosmopolitan women offered by a certain strain of TV series suddenly in abundance.

Don’t bother to call it post-feminist or third-wave feminist, just call it tacky soap opera. Really, what we’re seeing here are HBO knockoffs, not election-year commentary. There’s a contagion of this drivel on the small screen, descended from “Sex and the City” but not living up to the clever snark of that cable comedy.

“Lipstick Jungle,” on NBC, and “Cashmere Mafia,” on ABC, have so much in common, viewers will be forgiven for getting them confused. A trio of Manhattan career babes in one case, a quartet of Manhattan career babes in the other, fabulously dressed and available for drinks midday, taking care not to injure fragile male egos while demonstrating affluent daily life in the big city.

The shows may annoy mainstream viewers by being superficial and too much alike. They may annoy politically minded observers in this year of the first viable female candidate for president in a larger way, as a reflection of how the world still fears successful women. They tempt us to conclude that successful women are desperately unhappy because they can’t have it all.

Resist the urge.

The story lines are interchangeable. The burning questions are who’s sleeping with whom? Who’s gunning for a job? Who needs a drink because she’s angry/depressed/lonely/celebrating happy hour? How quickly can the friends gather at a local watering hole? And, not least, who are they wearing?

“Cashmere Mafia,” Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on KMGH-Channel 7, is by far the goofier knockoff. That’s the good news.

Lucy Liu, Frances O’Connor, Miranda Otto and Bonnie Somerville play the supportive best buddies in “Cashmere” who take time out from their busy overachieving lives running hotels and marketing cosmetics in order to cocktail. The actors are better than their material, including the is- she, isn’t-she-a-lesbian thread for Somerville’s character.

The theme is, these friends have got each other’s back. (If that’s true, one of them should have told Liu to demand a better wardrobe. Her puff-sleeves and little-girl skirts are a distraction from the feeble story.)

“Cashmere Mafia,” from Kevin Wade (“Maid in Manhattan”), debuted last month to middling ratings. Darren Star is an executive producer — big rift between “Sex and the City” producers Star and Candace Bushnell, noted — but this derivative fluff is not in the same league as the HBO hit.

“Lipstick Jungle,” based on Bushnell’s best seller, takes itself a tad more seriously and that’s too bad. It’s an annoyingly familiar conceit, with the presence of Brooke Shields serving as a curiosity in the place of actual plot intrigue.

“Lipstick Jungle,” premieres Thursday at 9 p.m. on KUSA-Channel 9.

The “Lipstick” ladies — Shields, Kim Raver (“24”) and Lindsay Price — are all about affairs, love and lust. On the side they run movie studios and magazines.

In the midst of the predictable whining and lunching, the “Lipstick” crowd bumps up against a bizarre casting choice: Lorraine Bracco appears as Shields’ rival, the publisher of a tell-all book about the studio executive’s life. What a come-down from “The Sopranos.”

Whether or not the cashmere and lipstick hours last as long as a certain powerful woman’s presidential campaign remains to be seen. If there’s any justice, the shows will fade away without much fuss. Instead, it’s possible they’ll be loved and hated with the same special intensity as a female candidate running for office.